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Prince Charon · 05-09-2021, 06:36 PM

A bit about the wormholes in the Irar setting mentioned in the OP, from a post I'm working on for that thread:

Wormholes in this setting are very difficult to detect at range, if no-one has placed a beacon or guard-station nearby. Scanning for them optically or otherwise using electromagnetic radiation, you're only going to find one if you're very close (Long-Distance Modifiers, pB241) and know to look for a visual distortion in the background objects (Astronomy-3 on top of the Long-Distance modifier), or if you happen to see something enter or leave, that doesn't have a cloaking device. Psychotronic detection systems do much better, having penalties based on light-second ranges (Size and Speed-Range table, pB550; treat 'yards' as light-seconds, and Speed/Range as the penalty; an Astronomical Unit is just under 500 light-seconds). You still need to be looking in the right place, though. Once you know where it is, following its orbital path becomes far less difficult, though you can still lose it of you aren't careful. A wormhole's mean radius of orbit mostly varies roughly between 3 AU and 13 AU (2d+1 AU, in other words).

The physical nature of a wormhole as currently understood is a spherical spacial and gravitic anomaly which reads to psychic detection somewhat like a continuous teleportation. The amount of gravity it produces is quite small, far out of proportion with the difficulty of altering its orbit (which so far no-one has managed). It is possible to pass through in both directions (manoeuver toward the centre of the wormhole, and you will come out the other side); oddly, vessels cannot collide in the 'tunnel' - they simply move around each other. Psychic or psychotronic communication is possible though the wormhole, though radio or laser communication seems not to be. Likewise, it is possible to scan though the wormhole using psychic senses and psychotronic sensors, though at best you're only likely to 'see' a few light-seconds around the wormhole on the other side.

Thoughts?

05-09-2021, 06:36 PM	#19
Prince Charon Join Date: Dec 2012	Re: [Space] Space Strategy: FTL Bottlenecks A bit about the wormholes in the Irar setting mentioned in the OP, from a post I'm working on for that thread: Wormholes in this setting are very difficult to detect at range, if no-one has placed a beacon or guard-station nearby. Scanning for them optically or otherwise using electromagnetic radiation, you're only going to find one if you're very close (Long-Distance Modifiers, pB241) and know to look for a visual distortion in the background objects (Astronomy-3 on top of the Long-Distance modifier), or if you happen to see something enter or leave, that doesn't have a cloaking device. Psychotronic detection systems do much better, having penalties based on light-second ranges (Size and Speed-Range table, pB550; treat 'yards' as light-seconds, and Speed/Range as the penalty; an Astronomical Unit is just under 500 light-seconds). You still need to be looking in the right place, though. Once you know where it is, following its orbital path becomes far less difficult, though you can still lose it of you aren't careful. A wormhole's mean radius of orbit mostly varies roughly between 3 AU and 13 AU (2d+1 AU, in other words). The physical nature of a wormhole as currently understood is a spherical spacial and gravitic anomaly which reads to psychic detection somewhat like a continuous teleportation. The amount of gravity it produces is quite small, far out of proportion with the difficulty of altering its orbit (which so far no-one has managed). It is possible to pass through in both directions (manoeuver toward the centre of the wormhole, and you will come out the other side); oddly, vessels cannot collide in the 'tunnel' - they simply move around each other. Psychic or psychotronic communication is possible though the wormhole, though radio or laser communication seems not to be. Likewise, it is possible to scan though the wormhole using psychic senses and psychotronic sensors, though at best you're only likely to 'see' a few light-seconds around the wormhole on the other side. Thoughts? __________________ Warning, I have the Distractible and Imaginative quirks in real life. "The more corrupt a government, the more it legislates." -- Tacitus Five Earths, All in a Row. Updated 12/17/2022: Apocrypha: Bridges out of Time, Part I has been posted.